Trudie Lang
January 13th 2012
Trudie works for Oxford University's Centre for Tropical Medicine and is a leading expert in conducting medical research studies in developing countries. Her work has focused largely on malaria, for which she has set up and run large-scale drug and vaccine trials across many African countries. However, in her role designing and operating clinical trials, Trudie has also worked in many other areas with a high incidence of diseases such as TB and HIV, as well as malnutrition and maternal health.

Her research focuses on those regions with the worst levels of disease and mortality, with most of these studies involving severely sick children. Trudie currently leads a programme which aims to teach and support local doctors and scientists running their own research programmes. Promoting such work in those countries most affected by diseases should enable efforts to focus better on local priorities, rather than those dictated by distant, wealthier organisations sponsoring the research.

Trudie lives in Wootton with her husband, Doug, and their two sons. She carried out research for her doctorate at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the whole family left Wootton for two years between 2006 and 2008 whilst Trudie carried out further work in Kenya and Doug taught in a school in Mombasa.
Her time in East Africa and other regions with limited resources proved invaluable and great strides were made in developing local research work, especially in Kenya, where she set up a clinical trial facility, now fully staffed by local scientists whose careers are being developed to bring improvements to child survival and other public health issues.

Trudie has had papers published in The Lancet, the British Medical Journal and Science magazine and is often invited to speak at international conferences. Recently, she addressed ministers of health in Ethiopia and gave an expert view on the realities of conducting research in developing countries at a United Nations conference in Washington.Trudie has also appeared on the BBC's Newsnight to discuss G8 funding for malaria vaccine development.

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JEREMY PAXMAN
February 3rd 2012
Jeremy is a celebrated broadcaster, journalist and author, who is perhaps best-known for his forthright style of interviewing on the BBC's Newsnight programme. He has also gained strong reputation for being a fair-minded quizmaster on University Challenge, after taking over from the legendary Bamber Gascoigne.

Jeremy joined the BBC in 1972 and began his career on Radio Brighton. He was then posted to Belfast to report on The Troubles before moving to London in 1977. Two years later, he transferred to the Panorama programme, reporting for over five years from many hot-spots, including Beirut, Uganda and Central America. He then read the Six O'clcok News for two years before joining BBC Breakfast Time.

Jeremy has been a presenter on Newsnight since 1989 and has conducted many memorable interviews, including the iconic confrontation in 1997 with Michael Howard, a former Home Secretary, about a meeting with the head of the Prison Service.

Jeremy famously repeated the same question twelve times in succession. Later, in a 20th anniversary edition of Newsnight, Jeremy told Howard that he had simply been trying to prolong the interview because the next scheduled item was not ready for broadcast.

In 2003, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, opted to make the case for the invasion of Iraq, via questions from a studio audience, with Jeremy mediating. The programme is often remembered for his asking Blair if he and President Bush prayed together. Blair replied, "No, Jeremy. We don't pray together."

Jeremy's individual approach is not restricted to political interviews. When Newsnight's editor decided to broadcast brief weather forecasts instead of financial reports, he openly ridiculed the decision: "And for tonight's weather — it's April, what do you expect?" he said. The financial reports were re-introduced after a few weeks.

In a Radio Times poll of 3,000 people in 2006, he was voted the fourth "scariest" TV personality, but he has a definite gentle side, as witnessed when he traced his family roots on Who Do You Think You Are?.

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TIM BIRKHEAD
March 2nd 2012
Tim is a professor of behaviour and evolution at the University of Sheffield and one of the world's leading authorities on birds. His research has helped to re-shape our understanding of bird mating systems and his talk will be particularly relevant, with springtime on the horizon.

Tim’s research has taken him to Canadian High Arctic, Labrador, California, Australia, Africa and Europe. Since 1972, he has maintained a long-term study of guillemots on Skomer Island, in west Wales, where he carried out his doctoral research.

Tim has written or edited ten books and his popular science books have gained widespread recognition. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Ornithology was awarded the McColvin Medal for best reference book in 1991 and The Red Canary was awarded the Consul Cremer Prize, whilist his iconic book, The Wisdom of Birds (an illustrated account of how we know what we know about birds) won Bird Book of the Year Award from the British Trust for Ornithology.

Tim has been president of the International Society for Behavioural Ecology and currently serves on the management committee of the Darwin Correspondence Project. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004 and he won two awards for his undergraduate teaching, which includes courses on animal behaviour and philosophy of science.

Tim has written for New Scientist and BBC Wildlife magazines, as well as The Independent, and had a regular column for seven years in the Times Higher Education. He has three children and both plays guitar and paints

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ROGER TEMPEST
March 30th 2012
Roger is one of Britain’s leading experts in the regeneration of country estates. He spent his early years in Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, and now lives at Broughton Hall in the Yorkshire Dales, where the Tempest family has had a presence for over 900 years (he is the 31st generation at Broughton) and where the award-winning estate is now home to 53 businesses.

Broughton is such a spectacular estate that the producers of Downton Abbey considered using it as the prime location before opting for Highclere.

During his talk, Roger will tell the story of how Broughton redefined itself after its survival was in serious jeopardy in the late 20th Century. His expertise in the heritage and rural regeneration sector is now so respected that he has acted as consultant to landowners and institutions in over 200 developments across the country.

Most recently, he bought and restored the magnificent Aldourie Castle estate, on the shore of Loch Ness, when over a thousand suppliers and craftsmen were used. The project was such a success that it was presented with the Historic Houses Association/Sotheby’s Restoration of the Year Award for 2011.

Roger first returned to Broughton in the 1980’s, leaving a blossoming career in Fleet Street. Early on, he saw the way that people live, work and play in the countryside was changing and that rural regeneration was becoming a powerful dynamic in redefining what the countryside should be about – far beyond agriculture.

At Broughton, he set about bringing redundant estate buildings back to life as offices and other uses. Roger believes strongly that Britain’s heritage and rural resource can be a huge force for good – and that its economic, social, environmental and cultural contribution is higher than its current perception.

Elsewhere, Roger has a very varied entrepreneurial life from trying to build a city resort in Libya, investing in low cost gyms - to owning a large commercial radio station and chairing a digital marketing company.

Roger’s infectious passion for the commercial viability of the heritage and rural economy will make for a fascinating evening in Wootton.

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LAURIE MAGUIRE
April 20th 2012
Laurie is Professor of English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and specialises in Shakespeare but her dramatic interests are wide - from ancient Greece to contemporary theatre. From the Renaissance, her particular passions are Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Heywood, and the period’s most prolific playwright, “Anon”.

Her talk in Wootton will focus on the image of Helen of Troy, who was the subject of her highly-acclaimed book, Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood, for which she received a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship.

In general, Laurie's research encompasses textual studies, editing, Elizabethan performance, classical influences on Renaissance writers and contemporary performances of Shakespeare’s plays. She has been a judge on the Laurence Olivier Theatre panel, and has reviewed theatre for the Times Literary Supplement. Her recent books include Shakespeare’s Names, as well as Where there’s a Will there’s a Way; or All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Shakespeare.

Laurie says her recreational interests are identical to her work interests (theatre and books) with two additions, which cannot be conducted in libraries or theatres - sport and cooking. She swims, hikes, runs, plays squash and goes mountain-biking. And because she loves to eat, she loves to make food.

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ESTHER RANTZEN
May 18th 2012
Esther is well-known for presenting the BBC television series, That’s Life, for over 20 years – one of the most popular shows in the history of British television. She is also celebrated for setting up the child protection charity, ChildLine, and she is also a keen advocate of the Burma Campaign UK.

Esther is very familiar with Oxfordshire, having read English at Somerville College, Oxford, where she performed with the Oxford University Dramatic Society. She joined the BBC as a trainee studio manager and worked on a number of current affairs programmes, before moving to the ground-breaking Man Alive in the mid-1960s.

That’s Life was first broadcast in 1972, with Esther as the main presenter. The show ran until 1994, often reaching audiences of more than 18 million. During that time, it expanded the traditional role of the consumer programme - from simply exposing faulty washing machines - to investigating life and death issues, such as a campaign for more organ donors.

Alongside the serious reports, though, the show kept its more lighthearted features such as Prince, the talking dog, which said "sausages", a table-tennis playing cat and a counting horse. Among the talented viewers discovered was a man who tap-danced on his false teeth.

The programme launched ChildLine in 1986, with the aim of finding better ways to detect children at risk of abuse. A helpline was swamped with calls and this gave Esther the idea of a specific helpline for children in distress – the first line of its kind in the world.

On its first night in October 1986, over 50,000 attempted calls were made. ChildLine now has fourteen bases around the UK, including two in Northern Ireland, three in Scotland, and two in Wales. In 2006, ChildLine merged with the NSPCC, which has enabled it to expand to try to meet demand and the helpline has now been copied in 150 countries around the world.

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CRAIG OGDEN
June 8th 2012
Craig Ogden is one of the world's leading classical guitarists and has performed on both radio and television throughout the UK, Europe, the USA, South East Asia, South Africa and Australia.

His recordings have received wide acclaim and BBC Music Magazine described Craig as "a worthy successor to Julian Bream", with his CD of 20th Century Classics by British composers nominated for a Grammy Award. We are thrilled that he has found time to appear in Wootton.







Craig made his Royal Albert Hall debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra performing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. He has performed concertos with many major orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia (with Vladimir Ashkenazy) and the Halle.

Craig's recording of all three solo Rodrigo guitar concertos with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra was greeted with wide acclaim. Rodrigo’s daughter wrote: “This recording has confirmed your position among the greatest guitarists

His release, ‘A Quiet Thing’, with counter-tenor, David Daniels, also received universal acclaim, as did their US recital tour of the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Mostly Mozart Festivals.

Craig’s CD, Music from the Novels of Louis de Bernières reached Number 10 in the classical charts and the Daily Telegraph made it CD of the week and their reviewer wrote: “This disc is pure joy”. Selling over 10,000 discs in three months, it is fastest-ever CD from Chandos Records.

Born in Australia, Craig started playing the guitar from the age of seven and has studied at the University of Western Australia and then at the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester, where he is now principal lecturer in guitar.

Craig has performed at most of the main UK festivals and is the most sought-after guitarist for chamber music in the country. He is married to the opera singer, Clare Bradshaw, with whom he regularly appears in concert around the world.

They live in Chadlington with their two children and Craig is a director of the highly popular Dean & Chadlington Summer Music Festival, in Oxfordshire. www.chadlingtonfestival.co.uk - which will again be held in June.

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Robin Laurance
Friday 7th September 2012


Robin is an internationally acclaimed photojournalist and has worked for most major newspapers, including The Sunday Times, The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Robin joined The Guardian newspaper in London in 1969 as the youngest staff photographer in Fleet Street, later leaving to pursue a freelance career in both writing and photography.

Since then he has travelled widely and, as well as working for newspapers, he has also worked for prestigious magazines such as Business Week and Forbes magazine. His corporate clients have included Glaxo, BP, the Ministry of Defence, ICI, the Metropolitan Police and IBM.

The National Portrait Gallery has a number of his photographic portraits in its collection and his website www.robinlaurance.co.uk, offers an idea of his exceptional talents.

Robin has published three books - The Millennium Generation, which examines the world’s young people to mark the beginning of the 21st century, and Portrait of Islam, which features a journey through the Muslim world.

Just What I Always Wanted looks at the history of present-giving and highlights the 365 most unusual birthday presents to have changed hands in the past 300 years. The Times Educational Supplement has said of Robin: “He is that rare breed - a genuine photojournalist with a talent for telling stories in photographs and words.”

Two exhibitions of Robin’s photographs have been held at the National Theatre in London and one at the Arts Centre in Birmingham. His work has also been included in exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery and he has lectured on photojournalism at the London College of Communication and the London School of Photojournalism.

Robin is currently working on a book about Cuba and Castro’s legacy, and is also researching the relationship between photography, politics and power.

He lives with his wife Aileen in Oxford.

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